A spacesuit
prototype designed for Mars exploration is bounding across the North Dakota
badlands this week in a series of field tests to check its mobility and performance.

Engineers
and university students are putting their North Dakota Experimental Planetary
Space Suit through a series of challenges, including mock-Martian hikes, sample
collections and - this Saturday - a simulated sandstorm.

The Mars
spacesuit is the culmination of 14 months of work by faculty and students with
the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, which received $100,000 from NASA to
develop the prototype. [The local public is invited to view the Mars spacesuit
in action on Sat. May 6, weather permitting, at its North Dakota test site.
Click here
for directions.]

"It's
actually going much better than we expected," said Pablo de Leon, the project's
manager, during a telephone interview. "This terrain, it's probably very
similar to some of the places on Mars."

The new
suit just one effort to advance human space exploration outside the safety of a
spacecraft. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for
example, are developing a Bio-Suit
System as a potential future spacesuit.

The North
Dakota Space Grant Consortium includes the University of North Dakota, the
North Dakota State College of Science, Turtle Mountain Community College,
Dickinson State University and North Dakota State University.

A
planetary spacesuit

An
experienced spacesuit designer and former Ansari X
Prize contender, de Leon and his team have assembled a 50-pound (23
kilogram) spacesuit - without the life support backpack - that can be sealed
and pressurized, locking its inhabitant behind a helmet and six layers of
protective fabric. A backpack containing communications equipment is equal in
size to current life support units used in NASA suits today, the team said.

The result,
researchers hope, is a planetary spacesuit smaller than those
used in Earth orbit by NASA and Russia's Federal Space Agency, and more
flexible than NASA's Apollo
lunar spacesuits, the only other garments to be worn on another world.

"We wanted
to really concentrate on the suit to improve mobility and to create a planetary
spacesuit instead one for zero [gravity]," de Leon said. "We're trying to
contain the human body in what is essentially a balloon of anthropomorphic
form."

When
spacesuits are pressurized with air they can become stiff, making simple finger
movements a chore for astronauts in space or on another world, he added. The
goal is to reduce the amount of effort required simply to move on Mars, where
future explorers will likely stage many extravehicular activities (EVAs) and
have reuse and repair their own spacesuits, de Leon said.

One of the
prototype's most noticeable features is a bright blue covering, designed for
thermal protection and to guard against dust, which can be removed.

"I believe
that one of the biggest challenges is going to be dust
containment," de Leon said, adding that the prototype's dust jacket may not
be enough for Mars explorers. "The particles on Mars are very small, like
talcum powder. So it's going to be challenging to do several EVAs and maintain
a good level of containment."

Donning
the prototype

Field tests
for the Mars prototype suit began May 1, with space studies graduate student
Fabio Sau tucked inside the prototype from the start.

"It's a
very personalized suit," Sau told SPACE.com from the North Dakota
badlands test site. "They built the suit based on my measurements."

Sau said
the suit, which has performed great so far, comes in two primary pieces split
at the waist between upper torso and lower body. Helmet and glove attachments
complete the outfit, which is then pressurized to about 1 pound per square-inch
(psi) for tests, he added.

For
comparison, NASA spacesuits are pressurized up to 4.3 psi while their Russian
Orlan counterparts are set at 5.8 psi.

"The most
difficult part is entering the upper torso," Sau said, adding that from start
to finish he can don the suit in 15 minutes with some help from his colleagues.

Sau said
getting the opportunity to work with actual hardware has been an amazing
experience, which de Leon hopes will encourage other university students to
pursue human
spaceflight-related careers.

"The main
interest of NASA when they gave us this grant was to train the new generation
of space studies students and engineers, because [they are] going to be the
workforce for the future missions," de Leon said. "The [spacesuit] improvement
we've seen is very significant, but of course we still have a long way to go."